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The drizzle is wet, just shy of freezing. It stings Sherlock’s cheeks and too-easily seeps under his scarf, clings to the wool of his coat. His icy fingers cramp around the key in his hand as he lets himself in to his flat. On the door, Mrs Hudson has hung a wreath that smells of pine. The droplets that cling to its edges shimmer and then fall as he opens and shuts the door.
Though it’s midday, the grey outside keeps the flat darker than it should be. He hangs his coat over two pegs so it will dry, opens his scarf over the back of his desk chair.
He switches on a lamp as he wends his way around the waist-high stack of boxes Mrs Hudson sent up from the basement last week. She’d had the workmen in to fix a broken pipe. They were saved, she’d said, just in the nick of time. The mould would have destroyed their contents if she’d left them, she’d said.
Now, they’re just--in his way, attacking his toes far too often in his pre-caffeinated morning minutes. Nothing in them is all that important; old papers and case notes, a few boxes Mycroft sent him from storage after he returned from the dead, years ago now. He could probably bin the whole lot and not miss a thing. He rips the seam in the tape with a pen from his desk before lifting the lid on the top one. He sighs and begins to make some decisions: Stay or go? Trash or treasure?
This box appears to be one of several that Mycroft’s minions packed years ago, from the house on Montague Street. Before rehab. Before John. An entire lifetime ago. He can hear a clock tick somewhere, and he thinks about the time passed, so much happened to leave him back almost exactly where he’d started--in a cluttered flat, alone. Well, minus the drugs of course (now, finally, for good this time).
At the bottom, he lifts a heavy ornament, a polished piece of fire-coloured glass in the shape of a phoenix. A gift from a client, from that long-ago life. He lets the weight of it settle in his palm, brushes a thumb over the curved edge at the arc of its wing. It stays. He crosses the room to set it on the mantel, letting his hand run along the back of John’s chair as he recrosses the room, returning again to his task.
His mind wanders as he flips through old newspapers and notes that mostly get the bin. It’s been five years since he’s returned. He still thinks of it as John’s chair. It’s not been John’s chair for even longer--six years? Seven? He never did ask how long John stayed at Baker Street in the time he was away.
He knows, he knows it must have been unbearable: empty chairs and empty kitchens and empty bedrooms, and empty, empty, empty. It’s been Sherlock’s penance for five years. He pays it willingly; he has accepted it. There are times enough when the chair is occupied for at least a little while, and those are the treasured days, aren’t they. Holy, he thinks, and the corner of his mouth turns up without his permission. It happens often enough to make the in-between times manageable. It keeps him right. It keeps the chair what it is: John’s.
He collapses an empty box, starting a stack he’ll take to recycling later. The next box down eventually joins it. And the next. He isn’t an old man, he thinks. There is absolutely no reason for this much stuff; he can’t possibly have actually created, collected, and then stored all of this. He boggles at the amount--of odd trinkets, of no-longer-important papers, receipts for cigarettes and old takeaways that got somehow mixed in. Evidence of the places he went, reminders of places he will never go again, echoes of the young man he was. All of them, all these insignificant, forgotten things, somehow remind him of the steps and decisions that have led him here, to who he is now.
The room has grown dark enough in the late afternoon that he has to blink against it, and he comes back to himself a bit. He should switch on another lamp. He hears music start, coming in tinny through the vent over the hob, funneling in from Mrs Hudson’s kitchen. Carols. She’ll likely be up in an hour or two with some biscuits or mince pies. He can’t smell them yet, but he will.
Wiping dusty hands on his trousers, Sherlock gathers some of the litter he’s sorted. He fits the stack of boxes under one arm and does his best with the straining plastic of the bin bags stuffed with far too much paper in. His middle finger rips a hole, but it catches at the knot at the top, reinforced where it’s gathered together. It should hold. He balances himself thinking he can probably make it in one go without disaster. Turning to go, he barks his shin against the last two of the boxes on his way out. The top one teeters but he braces it with his knee to stop it falling, and once it’s stilled its wobbling, he carries his load to the stairs and down.
The music is muffled as he passes Mrs Hudson’s door, and he can hear her humming along, the faint clank of crockery as she works. He braces himself against the cold when he opens the door, and though it’s the work of only a minute or two, getting the boxes and rubbish in their respective bins, it’s long enough that his whole body sighs with relief to be back indoors. He stomps his feet and allows himself a shudder, like a bird puffing its feathers in the warmth.
At the top of the landing, he sees light switch on, flooding out through his open flat door. He looks to the carpet, observing, and then moves his feet a bit faster, a bit lighter. John.
John smiles at him in greeting as he unwinds the scarf from his neck, draping his coat over the arm of the sofa. There are a couple of shopping bags dropped there as well.
“Rosie’s spending the weekend with her Aunt Harry, so I could get some shopping in. Was in the area and thought you might fancy a takeaway or something,” he says.
Sherlock’s stomach growls at the suggestion, and he nods.
“Anything that delivers. It’s too bloody cold out there to go back.”
“Quite right,” Sherlock agrees. He makes his way to the kitchen and rummages through a drawer. He hands John a stack of paper menus. “You pick. Tea?”
John hums in the affirmative as he looks through the choices. Sherlock fills the kettle, switches it on, and listens as John tells him about his day as they wait for it to boil.
Once they’ve got their mugs in hand, Sherlock follows John back into the sitting room where he has to sidestep the boxes to get to his chair.
“Case?” John asks, tapping the bottom one with his toe.
“No, just some old things from the basement. Broken pipe. Mrs Hudson sent them up.”
John leans forward to read the scrawled label on the bottom one.
“Is this one mine?” he asks. “It’s got my name on.”
Sherlock shrugs. It’s possible one of John’s would have got mixed in with his. He shifts the top box to the floor and hands John the pen he’s been using to break the tape. John takes it and stabs through, dragging it along the seam, lifting the edges with a slight pop to break the rest. His brow furrows.
“This isn’t mine.” John says, lifting and then replacing a set of Russian nesting dolls.
Sherlock stands beside him and peers inside. He feels the breath leave his lungs, his face blanch. The shoebox. His fingers reach in to touch the surface of it.
“You alright?” John asks, looking at him with a concerned raise of eyebrows.
Sherlock clears his throat. He’d forgotten.
“Yes,” he lies. “Fine.” He fights the urge to fling the thing out the window. Instead, he takes a shaky breath. He nods. He could keep lying, dismiss the whole thing as a mistake, but he doesn’t.
“It is yours,” Sherlock says, quiet.
John looks from Sherlock’s face down again into the box, and he lifts the slim shoebox from it. He tips up the lid with his forefinger and lets it fall back in. Brow furrowing, he holds up a postcard, a glossy photograph of deep blue water and quaint white buildings. CROATIA, it says across the front. He flips it around to read, and the lines of confusion around his eyes shift into something deeper. He lifts another card and flips it, eyes moving quickly over the words. He does another. And another.
Paris!
Greetings from Santa Fe
Buongiorno!
Taj Mahal
Tokyo, Japan
EDINBURGH CASTLE
“What,” he starts and then clears his throat. “Sherlock, what is this?”
Sherlock can’t find his voice; his throat won’t work. John is gaping at him. He presses his lips together before trying again. “I tried for one a week,” he admits, “but sometimes it was more.” He doesn’t like thinking about it. “Sometimes I was--indisposed.” His eyes burn.
“The whole time?” John asks, now flipping through the stacks and stacks of postcards.
Sherlock stays quiet.
“The whole time, Sherlock?” John repeats, firmer.
Sherlock nods. “They’re all there. They are yours.”
“Why didn’t you send them? Why did you keep them?”
Sherlock takes a breath. “It was an outlet,” he says. “A way for me to--stay sane. You couldn’t know, of course, so I sent them to Mycroft.”
John is breathing hard as he reads one from Nepal. Sherlock remembers what it says. He remembers what they all say. It’s far too easy to be honest when you believe yourself to be shouting into the void.
“You,” John begins, mouth tight. He purses his lips, taking in air through his nose, shaking his head slowly. “You wrote to me.” John’s wide eyes pin Sherlock in place as he steps closer.
“I did,” Sherlock says.
“Was this true?” He holds the Nepal card up. “You signed--”
“It’s always been true,” Sherlock says, taking the card from him. “It’s why I had to go. You are too important.”
The sound that comes from John’s throat sounds like a growl. He swallows dryly. “You planned my wedding,” John says, and his face falls and falls as he puts the pieces together, begins to understand.
Sherlock smiles, small, trying a bit to soothe the ache he sees there, a reflection of the ache he has lived with for too many years; he knows how it hurts. “It’s always been true, John,” he says again, this time stepping in to John’s space just a bit.
John remains quiet. The moment stretches long enough for Sherlock to register the soft sounds of Mrs Hudson’s music again, an odd sort of whimsey in the midst of all this weight. Sherlock needs to move his feet; he can no longer bear the heat of John’s gaze without doing--something. He steps to the mantel, placing the card next to the glass phoenix. As he does, the light from the kitchen shines through it just so, and for a moment, his thumb is painted in fiery orange light.
He only turns back around when he feels John’s hand, warm and solid on his shoulder. John’s eyes find his as he slides his palm down Sherlock’s arm, taking his hand.
“When you d--” John cuts himself off with a hum before starting again. “Ella tried to get me to say--” His fingers tighten around Sherlock’s. “I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”
Sherlock’s heart pounds in his chest, and he cannot stop looking at John’s face.
“But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t feel it. That--that I don’t still--” He takes Sherlock’s other hand, and the pounding of blood in Sherlock’s ears is nearly deafening. “I never did stop,” he says. “Not really.”
Sherlock feels as though he might combust. “John, I--”
John’s hand is warm against his cheek.
John’s breath is warm against his jaw.
John’s lips burn like fire against his lips.
Sherlock fits his hand against John’s nape, thumb brushing the soft skin under his ear, deepening the kiss, becoming something brand new.
-end-